libraries, learning and lego

The making of a bossa nova library song: 7 inches of library user appreciation

7 inches of library bossa nova vinyl

If your library was a musical genre which one would it be? Pop like Bieber, rock like Rolling Stones or more Jazzy like Miles Davis? Or maybe a crossover of different genres? I have no doubt: My library, The Faculty Library of Social Sciences (Copenhagen University Library), is a bossa nova library: it’s warm and welcoming just like the soothing sound of bossa nova and in our development of services we like to reach for the literally meaning of the phrase bossa nova which means ‘new trend’ in Portuguese.

For some time we have talked about making some sort of dedication to the hardworking students and faculty members that uses the library. Music is king, period, so what more obvious than to pay them a tribute by making a song for them – and in our very case it had to be a bossa nova song for sure.

The making of a bossa nova library song

This resulted in what I believe is the first bossa nova library song in the world: Lost in your time (at The Library) by Los Bossa Nuevo Biblioteca released on Go To The Library Records – give it a listen here:

Or check out the music video that are soon to become MTV darling:

The work with the song started a while back when we got Python ninja Jens Stein Jørgensen enrolled at the faculty library. Besides being keen on Python and other programming languages Jens is a skilled bossa nova guitarist. We already got the library swinning with some very musical librarians: Rasmus Rindom Riise playing drums in danish hard rock band Dear Delusion, Anders Bonatto Fisker writing songs and singing for Danish contemporary protest band Anders Fisker Band and Mads Korsgaard being guitarist and sound wizard in Danish 90’s tribute band So 90’s.

Anders did the first draft on the lyrics (we decided that it should not be a song on how great the library is but a song about the students that uses the library so it contains 5 small stories about the 5 subjects we serve at social sciences) and Jens came up with a take on the melody. Then we did a jam session at my office with Rasmus and the lead singer from Dear Delusion, Simon Roland (I was a bit worried he was gonna hard rock sing the crap out the song but it turns out he had the fines voice for this project).

Simon, Rasmus, Anders and Jens at the office bossa nova jam session

After a few hours of bossa jamming we decided that we were ready for recording.

The recording took place at Mads’ apartment. We sat up some recording gear, opened a bottle of wine and approximately three hours later we were done. It was not an all easy birth for our little bossa baby. There were some differences of opinion on wherever there should be added a bass line to the track but that is what happens when you put passionate people in the same room. In the end it all came together and Mads gave the track some sugar in the sound engineering room, we added the bass line and we got our bossa nova library track.

Simon doing the vocals

Record release, live gig and Los Bossa Nuevo Biblioteca world tour

I love vinyl. I like streaming too but vinyl is music you can touch! So we decided to get ‘Lost in your time (at The Library)’ out on 7 inch vinyl singles. Side A is with bass and Side B is the pure version. We ordered 500 copies and they will be used for library competitions, gifts and so on.

Shortly after the release I got a call from The Universty Post who wanted to know what the library bossa nova fuzz was all about. They brought a great little piece on it here

First live gig for Los Bossa Nuevo Biblioteca took place at a bossa nova loving librarians 50th years birthday at The Royal Library. You can get a little treat of it here:

Next in line is world tour and world domination for the band – help us make it fly by sharing the story of the worlds first library bossa nova song 🙂